For Immediate Release:

August 30, 2001

Contact: Kristin Dawkins – 612-870-3410. kdawkins@iatp.org

Minneapolis – A United Nations Sub-Commission adopted three resolutions earlier this month calling into question the impact of expanding economic globalization on human rights. The resolutions specifically urged the World Trade Organization (WTO) to take human rights into account when negotiating trade rules covering health care, education and other human services, and patent rights.

The resolutions reflect the growing tension between competing global institutions leading up the World Trade Organization’s Fourth Ministerial Meeting in Doha, Qatar.

The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in a resolution on Globalization and its Impact on the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights:

• reaffirmed the importance and relevance of human rights in international trade, investment and finance;
• urged all governments and international economic policy forums, including the Doha WTO meeting to be held in November, to take human rights fully into account.

The Sub-Commission resolution also expresses concern about the human rights implications of liberalization of international trade in agricultural products, especially on the right to food for members of vulnerable communities, and proposes an expert consultation amongst the Sub-Commission and other UN agencies, the WTO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to consider these concerns.

"This UN statement on agriculture is very important, particularly in light of widespread food dumping that is pushing many small farmers off the land," said Kristin Dawkins, Vice-President of International Programs at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. "In Doha and the on-going WTO negotiations on agriculture and patents, the incorporation of human rights law would dramatically change the outcomes."

Reiterating a concern voiced for the first time last year, the Sub-Commission also addressed the negative impact of the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on human rights. The resolution on Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights proposes an investigation into whether the patent, as a legal instrument, is compatible with the promotion and protection of human rights, and signals continuing concern that the scope and meaning of several provisions of the TRIPS Agreement need to be clarified in order to ensure that States’ obligations under this agreement do not contradict their binding human rights obligations. The protection of indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge, food security, access to medicine, technology transfer and development and preventing 'bio-piracy' are but some of the crucial human rights issues raised by the implementation of the WTO TRIPS Agreement.

"The TRIPS agreement is a direct threat to human rights, particularly with regards to farmers’ rights to seeds, and the sick’s access to disease-fighting drugs," said Dawkins. "Hopefully WTO negotiators will take these resolutions seriously as they continue talks."

In a third resolution applying, for the first time, a human rights perspective to the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Sub-Commission called for a report on this matter from the High Commissioner for Human Rights; it also recommended that the WTO include consideration of the human rights implications of the GATS on the provision of basic services, such as affordable and accessible health and education services.

Peter Prove of the Lutheran World Federation stated: "With these three resolutions, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights sends an important signal and clear message to all governments as well as international economic policy forums to take international human rights obligations and principles fully into account in international economic policy formulation."

Nathalie Mivelaz of the World Organization Against Torture pointed out that "these initiatives of the Sub-Commission are very timely coming as they do shortly prior to the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in September and the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the WTO, to be held in Doha in November, and signal an intensification in the scrutiny of further developments in these forums by the human rights community".

And Miloon Kothari of Habitat International Coalition added that, "in the build-up to Doha, these resolutions from an important UN human rights body bolster the case for a comprehensive human rights review of the Uruguay round agreements and point convincingly to the folly of embarking on a new round prior to fully coming to grips with the conflicts between agreements such as TRIPS, AoA and GATS and the existing legal obligations of States under the international human rights instruments".

In another important resolution, the Sub-Commission supported efforts towards a legal mechanism for the review of individual and group complaints of violations of economic, social and cultural rights. As stressed by Nathalie Prouvez of the International Commission of Jurists, "there are no rights without adequate remedies and the adoption of a universal complaint mechanism for violations of economic social and cultural rights will fill a huge gap in the international human rights protection system."

Nathalie Mivelaz (World Organization Against Torture), Tel: 00 41 22 809 49 39; Email: nm@omct.org

Nathalie Prouvez (International Commission of Jurists), Tel: 00 33 6 07 08 62 99; Email: prouvez@icj.org

Peter Prove (Lutheran World Federation), Tel: 00 41 78 757 6749; Email: pnp@lutheranworld.org

Miloon Kothari, (International NGO Committee for Human Rights in Trade and Investment);

Tel/Fax: 91.22.4358492; E-mail: hichrc@ndf.vsnl.net.in